Chapter 6 King Louis XIV King William and Queen Anne p. 106-111

France Finds a Foothold in Canada Like England and Holland, France was a latecomer in the race for colonies. It was convulsed in the 1500s by foreign wars and domestic strife. In 1598, the Edict of Nantes was issued, allowing limited toleration to the French Huguenots (Protestants). When King Louis XIV became king, he took an interest in overseas colonies. In 1608, France established Quebec, overlooking the St. Lawrence River.

Samuel de Champlain, an intrepid soldier and explorer, became known as the “Father of New France.” He entered into friendly relations with the neighboring Huron Indians and helped them defeat the Iroquois. The Iroquois, however, did hamper French efforts into the Ohio Valley later. Unlike English colonists, French colonists didn’t immigrate to North America by hordes. The peasants were too poor, and the Huguenots weren’t allowed to leave. Also, unlike the English colonies, there were no popularly elected assemblies. Samuel de Champlain and an Iroquois warrior

New France Fans Out New France’s (Canada) most valuable resource was the beaver. French fur trappers were known as the coureurs de bois (runners of the woods) and littered the land with place names, including Baton Rouge (red stick), Terre Haute (high land), Des Moines (some monks) and Grand Teton (big breast). The French voyagers also recruited Indians to hunt for beaver as well, but the Indians were decimated by the white man’s diseases and alcohol. Consequently, their religious and traditional ways of life suffered greatly. French Catholic missionaries zealously tried to convert Indians.

To thwart English settlers from pushing into the Ohio Valley, Antoine Cadillac founded Detroit (“city of straits”) in 1701. Louisiana was founded, in 1682, by Robert de LaSalle, to halt Spanish expansion into the area near the Gulf of Mexico. Three years later, he attempted to return, but instead landed in Spanish Texas and was murdered by his mutinous men. The French wanted to control Louisiana because they would then control the mouth of the Mississippi and all the trade up and down that river. The fertile Illinois country, where the French established forts and trading posts at Kaskaskia, Cahokia, and Vincennes, became the garden of France’s North American empire.

The Clash of Empires King William’s War and Queen Anne’s War The English colonists fought the French coureurs de bois and their Indian allies. Neither side considered America important enough to waste real troops on. The French-inspired Indians ravaged English settlements in Schenectady, New York, and Deerfield, Mass. The British did try to capture Quebec and Montreal and failed, but they did temporarily control Port Royal. The peace deal in Utrecht in 1713 gave Acadia (renamed Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay to England, pinching the French settlements by the St. Lawrence. It also gave Britain limited trading rights with Spanish America. Yet, perhaps most importantly to the American colonists, for the next 50 years after the Treaty of Utrecht, Britain provided the 13 colonies decades of “salutary neglect”.

The War of Jenkins’ Ear An English Captain named Jenkins had his ear cut off by a Spanish commander, who had essentially sneered at him and dared him to go home crying to his king. This war was confined to the Caribbean Sea and Georgia. This war soon merged with the War of Austrian Succession and came to be called King George’s War in America. France allied itself with Spain, but England’s troops captured the reputed impregnable fortress of Cape Breton Island (Fort Louisbourg) in 1748. However, peace terms of this war gave strategically located Louisbourg, which the New Englanders had captured, back to France! This outraged the colonists, who feared the fort.